I don’t clearly remember life before Google search. Since the early 2000’s it has felt like an extension of my brain, always giving me exactly what I was looking for. For 15 years, I felt kind of weirded out whenever I saw anyone using a non-Google search engine.

Put simply, I was a Google fanboy. Three months after switching to DuckDuckGo, however, I’m not sure I’ll ever switch back.

Giving up Google wasn’t easy, but after forcing myself to try DuckDuckGo – mostly so I could write this article – there’s nothing I particularly miss about Google. There’s a lot I’ve grown to love about DuckDuckGo, though.

Sure: there’s the privacy concerns. Who hasn’t, in the post-Snowden age, felt weird about Google cataloging and monetizing individual users’ inner monologues? But uncomfortable as Google’s tracking is, three months after switching I’m sticking to DuckDuckGo because I like the features.

Where Google is trying to do everything for me, DuckDuckGo is willing to reward me for taking the time to learn its tricks.

!Bangs Are The !Bomb

Google wants you to search for something, see results and click something – possibly an ad. DuckDuckGo is willing to let you skip their results – and their ads– entirely if that’s what you want.

The main way they do this is with Bangs, a confusingly named tool that lets you quickly search other websites from DuckDuckGo.

You don’t even need an account to make these customizations, and you can create an anonymous bookmarklet to save them for use on other computers.

You Can Turn Off The Ads

Speaking of customization, there’s an option I’ve not seen any site provide

That’s right: DuckDuckGo is giving users the ability to turn off ads entirely, if they choose to, all while encouraging users to keep spreading the word about the site.

There Are Keyboard Shortcuts

You can browser DuckDuckGo’s search results completely with the keyboard: just use the arrow keys to switch between results, then hit Enter and the page opens. You can even hit CTL or CMD Enter to open a result in a new tab, in the background.

Escaping The Filter Bubble

Google thinks knowing what sorts of things I’m likely to click on makes their search results better. For a long time I bought into this, even though the implications were uncomfortable.

I watched talks like these ones and thought the results were unfortunate but necessary if I want the best search results possible. Search is intensely personal, after all, so why wouldn’t monitoring make things better?

But since switching I’ve noticed more diversity in the sites that come up in searches – and I’ve enjoyed it. Just because I’ve found solutions for my problems on Reddit in the past doesn’t mean I need to see more Reddit in my results, but over time Google favored that and other sites for me. DuckDuckGo’s been providing a lot more diversity, showing me sites I rarely looked at before, and I really like it.

Basically, the Internet of filter bubbles is boring – and it’s nice to be out of that.

The Down Side: No Integration with Google Services

I’m not going to pretend that DuckDuckGo is better than Google in every way: it isn’t. Some of the main weaknesses have to do with a couple of features Google has integrated with its search results: Google News, Google Image Search and Google Maps. These services are all the best at what they do, and neither are integrated into DuckDuckGo’s search results for obvious reasons.

In both cases, I’ve resorted to using the above-mentioned !bang functionality: !gm is Google Maps, !gi is Google Image Search and !gn is Google News. It works, but I quite liked having these features integrated with my search. Still, there are enough pros to DuckDuckGo to make up for this major con.

DuckDuckGo is to Google as Twitter is to Facebook

I hardly log into Facebook these days – I simply don’t find it interesting. When I do log in, I jump away from the Timeline as quickly as possible, because it has usually got nothing to offer me. I prefer Twitter, because it gives me full control over what I see in my timeline: only the most recent posts from people I’ve specifically chosen to follow show up, and they show up in order. It took some time for me to build an interesting timeline, but it’s paid off.

The more I use DuckDuckGo, the more I realize it’s like Twitter: it’s the search engine that gives me what I ask for, instead of tracking my behavior and giving me what it thinks I want. Some people might prefer the track-and-cater-to-whims approach, but I think the give-the-user-what-they-ask-for approach is better.

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John S

October 17, 2018 at 1:10 am

I've tried DDG a few times, when I researched I felt that its results which are developed from many sources sort of conflicts results sometimes. In other words its a mix of several sources and DDG own search BOT. But after using a while I found myself going back to Google search for more relevant results. Given that DDG has less then 1% of the search engine space. One has to wonder how long they can survive ??

I appreciate DuckDuckGo and did switch to it for about 3 or 4 months. The switch was going to permanent for me as I became disgusted with seeing my ACTUAL physical address at the end of every Google search.

However, I switched back to Google about a week ago. Although I love DuckDuckGo’s respect of user’s privacy, the search results are nowhere near Google’s.

I could barely even find a wallpaper for my computer on DuckDuckGo and the selection was very limited. Not to mention Google’s search engine is much faster. It’s not that I want to be spied on. Google is the best search engine around in my honest opinion.

I entirely agree about using DuckDuckGo. For me, I was already concerned about all the tracking in Google, but the moment I changed over almost 100% was when I realised that Google is essentially an index of *popular* links, and using popularity as the criterion has undesirable results. For instance "Are Jews different?" (my attempt at a neutral question in a difficult area) into Google gave lots of anti-semitism on the first page, with much more anti-semitism in the "other suggested searches" down the bottom; in DuckDuckGo it gave a much more neutral list including a link to a website with a long & interesting history of the Jews.

Google could perhaps argue that they are reacting to a "fact" that most people who ask "are jews different?" tend to go on to click on the more anti-semitic links; but Google is also pushing people down that route.

[Note: I don't retry the searches every week. Google could possibly have done something about the problem by now. Try it for yourselves!]

Great article! It really makes me think about that. While online privacy is a very complex matter and not just solved by the search engine, I find the point about the filter bubble most interesting. Often I search for things that are beyond my daily interests...who knows, maybe that's gonna work out better with DDG.

1. !Bangs: you can just setup keywords in Chrome to search on any website.
2. open https://www.google.com.ua/preferences
other points are just not an advantage for me assuming that I get better search results with google.

1. Setting up keywords is nice, but !bangs don't need any setting up: they're just there, regardless of which browser you're using.
2. I don't think Google offers quite the same level of customization, but I could be wrong.

If you're getting better results with Google than stick to it, I'd say, find what works for you and use it. Just don't be blind to the fact that what's familar isn't always what's best.

Google search engine keywords dont work for syncing last I checked. Firefox has bookmark keywords that can accomplish this manually as well and the syncing works great. However, I use DDG as well because the !Bangs system is great.

I'm going to try DDG again, using it exclusively for a week. I agree with all your points and I do get slightly worried by the knowledge that Google is tracking all the time and skewing the searches - particularly as many of my searches are on behalf of clients and so skew future search results in ways which aren't useful to me. I can't now remember why I originally stopped using DDG but I definitely - reading your article - wasn't making the best use of it. Here goes...

Good article, thank you. I don't like Google's tracking & recording behaviour but still felt compleeled to use its search capabilities, so I have been using StartPage for quite some time now. SP channels your search through Google but without any identifying info & mixed with other people's search queries. You get Google results back, so that's cool.
However, reading your article about DDG I think I'll have another look at it :-)

Justin, I tried DDG & really like it. However, there is 1 big drawback: you can't filter search results by date. With Google apparently you can, though I have not figured out how.
With StartPage it is simple: on the left of the search results you can opt for any time, plast 24 hours, past week, past month, past year. I have switched back to StartPage & will only go back to DDG when time filtering is possible. This has been a request by DDG users for 4 years, initially they said they would implement it but so far it has not happened. Pity.

Justin Pot is a technology journalist based in Portland, Oregon. He loves technology, people and nature – and tries to enjoy all three whenever possible. You can chat with Justin on Twitter, right now.